METALS MENTIONED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



271 



his historians know no nearer proportion of the circumference of a 

 circle to the diameter than three to one. The writer's honoured 

 father, Lt.-Col. Thomas Best Jervis, of the Bombay Engineers, 

 F.R.S., then a young man in India, heartily took up the matter 

 to sustain the accuracy of the inspired narrative. He showed 

 that the Jewish cubit (Heb. Amma, as the mother of all 

 measures) being the 72 millionth part of the earth's circumfer- 

 ence, the capacity of the molten sea divided by 2,000 gives the 

 contents of the Jewish bath ; and since the Roman measures of 

 capacity were derived from the Temple of Jerusalem, the bath 

 held exactly GO Roman pounds of distilled water. 



He proved by the higher mathematics that the brazen sea was 

 of an oblate spheroidal form, i.e., the half of a solid generated by 

 the revolution of an ellipse on its conjugate axis, the conjugate 

 remaining fixed, because the depth is stated to be half the 

 length of the transverse, the mutual relation of the several 

 numbers implying as perfect a knowledge of the ratio of the 

 diameter to the circumference as we now possess. In one 

 instance, it is said, "it contained 2,000 baths," in the other " it 

 received and held 3,000 baths," where the superadded expression 

 makhzik is derived from the root khazak, to hold, to overpower, 

 to prevail over, employed when David prevailed over Goliath, 

 intimating something heaped up. A vessel of the form 

 mentioned would contain precisely one-half more heaped corn 

 than water. The first instance gives the liquid capacity of 

 2,000 baths, the second a dry measure of 3,000 baths.* 



B.C. 1001 . " Solomon made a brazen scaffold of five cubits 

 long and five cubits broad and three cubits high, and had it set 

 in the midst of the court, and upon it he stood and kneeled 

 down upon his knees before all the congregation of Israel, and 

 spread forth his hands to heaven." (n Chron. vi, 13. See also 

 ibid, xxiv, 12.) 



Copper carried away from the Temple. 



B.C. 588. At the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar " the 

 pillars of brass that were in the house of the Lord, and the 

 bases, arid the brazen sea that was in the house of the Lord 

 the Chaldeans brake, and carried all the brass of them to 

 Babylon, the chaldrons also, and the shovels, and the snuffers, and 



* Captain Jervis, Records of Ancient Science, exemplified and authenti- 

 cated in the Primitive Universal Standard of Weights and Measures 

 Calcutta, 1835. 



